A variety of systems are known in which a first integrated circuit component (a/k/a chip) communicates with a second or remote integrated circuit component across a bus or other communication channel.
For a variety of reasons, depending upon the system design, it often occurs that the bus bandwidth is too much for one of the integrated circuit components. Also, the pin count of one of the integrated circuit components often may be so large that it excessively drives up the manufacturing cost of the chip. In this regard, there is a recognized exponential (as opposed to linear) component to production costs for integrated circuit components in relation to pin count.
As one example, consider a system having a host processor communicating to a plurality of memory chips through a memory controller. As the number of memory chips increases, the pin count of the memory controller chip also increases. This leads to excessive manufacturing costs of the memory controller chip, which is undesirable. Likewise, the bandwidth of the system bus (between the host processor and memory controller) may exceed that supportable by the memory controller.